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Brenna Tanner, University of Tsukuba, JapanAbstract
This study examines how the 1880 Meiji New Testament translated the Greek terms hamartia (sin) and charis (grace) within the scope of the four Gospels and the book of Romans. Using corpus analysis and Voyant Tools, it compares the distribution of the Japanese term tsumi (sin) with the renderings used for charis. The analysis finds that tsumi was applied consistently to hamartia and extended to Greek terms associated with judgment, condemnation, legal charge, and trespass. By contrast, charis appears through four unstable renderings: onchō, on, megumi, and aiseraretari. The result was an asymmetrical moral vocabulary in which guilt and divine judgment acquired a stable, legally weighted expression while grace remained fragmented and socially inflected. The paper situates this pattern within descriptive translation studies and theories of translation ideology, arguing that the translation’s institutional norms shaped Japanese literary language beyond the biblical text. It then traces the literary implications of this asymmetry in Dazai Osamu’s Ningen Shikkaku (1948), where the protagonist cannot identify an antonym for crime. The study concludes that the Meiji translation did not merely transfer theological terms; it helped structure a modern Japanese moral imagination in which guilt was more lexically available than redemption.
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Conference: ECAH2026Stream: Humanities - Literature/Literary Studies*
This paper is part of the ECAH2026 Conference Proceedings (View)
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